Bruges holiday

Little late with this one, as we actually went to Bruges what seems like ages ago. In the meantime we've been quite ridiculously busy, both at home and at work (decoratingnewcomputerhendovisitvideowrapetcetc), and we never quite got round to blogging about it.

It's all a bit late now to go into massive detail, but here's a few highlights:

The trip

Eurostar is great! Really easy, very quick and pleasantly non-stressful. Brussels main station was slightly intimidating, but we managed to find our connecting train with about 30 second to go!

The weather

Somehow we managed to get three days of really sunny, warm, wonderful weather that brought out the city wonderfully and enabled us to have some extremely pleasant wanderings.

The chocolate

Goes without saying really, but the chocolate was excellent. :) I'm not really a chocolate person (unlike Leiali), so the fact it got me so excited really is saying something! Remarkably we managed to make the chocolates last for about a month on our return! Whether that was down to restraint or simply the mass quantities we bought is debateable, though...

The museums

Bruges is home to a wonderful collection of art and history museums. From an ooooold hospital to an eclectic collection of European art throughout the ages to a surprisingly interesting examination of chocolate (aside from a rather suspicious lack of due attention to the unfortunate slave trade connections...), it was all fascinating stuff.

The food

Bit of a mixed bag this one. For some reason, Belgians (or at least Brugesians) are obsessed with chips. Every damn meal comes with chips! Now, I'm not averse to chips, but it even became rather much for me. The first night we found a superb little restaurant, though, that was a little different from the masses of cloned eateries around the market square. It was here that I discovered Waterzooie, which is essentially a collection of seafood (prawns, salmon etc) in a fantastic creamy sauce. Not my usual fare, but absolutely delicious.

The Tower

Climbing the Belfry at the market square was my personal highlight. Astounding views from the top and an exhilerating climb, combined with brilliantly intricate clockwork machinery in the bell system itself. For Nadia, however, it was nearly her undoing. If it wasn't for a conveniently placed bench, she may very well have been too exhausted to make it back down the steps, and would instead have found herself known as the Moany Woman of Bruges Belfry.

The return

The only real snag we hit was on our return to the UK, when we arrived at the London Underground only to find that they'd just started a strike, about 10 minutes beforehand. Due to being away for a good few days we were blissfully unaware of this and got stuck in a rather mad human traffic jam, a few hundred feet underground. It was rather unnerving for a while, but we eventually fought our way to the surface and Nadia used her London Know-How to bus us to Liverpool Street.

All-in-all it was a marvellous weekend, and I wouldn't be at all surprised to find us back in Bruges in years to come.

Happy Birthday Jenny!

As soon as there isn't a strike, your prezzies and card will be winging their way to you. Until then, here's a picture to say we haven't forgotten you. Will add this on facebook too!

Happy Birthday Jen, from Simon & Nadia - See you in a couple of weeks?

The Detective and the Robot

Following hot on the heels of Nadia's new stories, I've finally got round to editing my final piece, following Ian's comments at the end of the course. I've added a few bits and tweaked a few pieces and I think it's much better now, even though most of the changes are individually quite minor.

The story link can be found to the right under Tarn's short stories, so check it out and let me know what you think! For those of you that have previously read The Detective, I should note that it starts out quite similar, but follows a markedly different path.

Enjoy. :D

Stories

Finally,

I have put my two stories up. The short one, entitled 'Goblins' is the first one I wrote for our creative writing class, so it was written at some point in May and based on a dream I had many years ago. The second is my final piece 'Journey of a King' with amendments after comments from the course tutor and Simon. It was hard work but I thoroughly enjoyed it. I'm fairly certain that at least two white hairs on my head are attributable to the course, which doesn't bode well for my Masters! I now know that for some reason, creepy stuff is my thing. Very strange. Maybe I should write a story about a werewolf to frighten Simon scare-de-cat?

I do hope people like them, and let me know either way by commenting on the blog, if you just email me Simon will be sad as he'll think no-one reads the blog.

New officey goodness

This last week up at FXhome we've been moving down the corridor and into new offices, which has been rather knackering but also most excellent! I like to think that my recent DIY experience with the spare room came in handy, as I felt like I was decidedly less useless than when we put the last office together. :)

It's really rather grand - to think we were all still working from home just a year ago. We've now got oodles of space, which is essential for storage now that we're shipping, nice new monitors and even a proper leisure/meeting area with comfy sofas. All-in-all it's a far more pleasant area in which to work, and a far easier place to work with regards to sending out boxes and stuff.

The sofa area is particularly spiffy - we're going to get the webcam all set up so that we can do proper web conferencing with Malone and Hendo when they're not in Norwich.

Check it out: http://fxhome.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=31435

Visiting Chris & Jen in Hastings!

Llama hats are brilliant. During the summer they're slightly less brilliant, so I haven't had much opportunity to show off my membership of the Llama Hat club since the inaugural night with Mr Wayne. During our visit to Hastings a few weeks back, however, I got an opportunity to adorn my bonce with another Llama hat, as can be seen in this photo. Chris also appears to be wearing a jester's hat.

Since their return from traversing the globe, Chris & Jen decided to set up shop in Hastings, which gave us an excuse to go check it out. Rather further to go to see them than just two streets up the hill, but they're worth it! (well, except when Chris is physically abusing me - more on that in a moment)

After a fairly painless drive down from Norwich (other than an absolutely foul pub lunch at the roadside Blue Boy in Kent - DO NOT EAT THERE), we then proceeded to get utterly lost in Hastings. I firmly blame this on Jenny's rubbish directions. Once we eventually found their flat, I was then faced with one of the most ludicrously difficult parking situations in automobile history, thanks to late-19th century architects completely failing to predict the rise of the ubiquitous motor vehicle. Remarkably, we didn't lost any wing mirrors, although getting out again would require a similar feat of wheel wrestling, aided by a random stranger who was suspiciously sitting in his car nearby.


Anyways, Chris & Jen's flat is rather spiffy, being top-floor, right on the seafront and complete with C&J cosiness. And we like being cosy. First night Jen cooked a rather magnificent chicken/tuna rice + peppers spicy thingummy, which we really must have again sometime. Saturday involved a pleasant wander around the Old Town and a ride up the funicular (or up the vernacular, as Nadia would have it) in order to gambol merrily about the cliff-top (Chris beat me to the tip of the mound, but only just, and I reckon he'd been practising from childhood).

The afternoon involved an exciting round of Adventure Golf, which Chris actually invented (with a bit of help from his Dad, I believe). I don't know how much of a percentage Chris gets from inventing crazy golf, but he must be set up for life! Jenny somehow got two hole-in-ones, which left us all rather flabbergasted - not to mention in 2nd, 3rd and 4th places. The Hastings Wind was starting to play silly buggers, so we retired back to Chez Chris & Jen for fun and games, joined by Ian and Rachel.

A word of warning: Do not play 'Grab a Pig' with Chris Coleman. As some of you may know, he tends to take his games rather seriously (he also very much likes to count). Grab a Pig involves swapping cards until you hit on a particular combo that enables you to - wait for it - grab a pig, a pig being a small plastic thing in the shape of a pig that sits in the middle of the table. When you've got 6 people playing everything's fine. But that's how it always starts - 'ooh' and 'aah'. Then there's the running, and the screaming. Particularly after, having found oneself in the last round with only Chris remaining, one discovers one's finger bent backwards in a most unnatural manner after a particularly violent 'Chris Lunge'.

I shall get my revenge one day.

We came back to Norwich on the Sunday, and glared with malice at the Blue Boy as we drove past. Do not eat there.

Click here for our pics!!

The Computer(s)

Long while since the last entry and there's lots to talk about! It's been a rather manic month-or-two, one way or another, so I wasn't entirely sure where to start. Given that I'm currently plonked in front of my new computer, however, I thought I'd start there!

Due to Nadia starting her new Masters course this month, she needed a computer. Rather than buy her something cheap and nasty, we decided that she would have my old computer (which isn't massively old, and is actually fairly spiffy still) and I'd get myself something new and sexy. So, yes, essentially it was just an excuse for me to get a beast of a machine.

Installation all went rather smoothly, other than Vista being a bit temperamental when it comes to the order SATA drives are plugged in. The lovely 22" Samsung monitor also had a nasty backlight error, but eBuyer sent a replacement for that swiftly, so all is now good. Certainly better than my first computer building session a few years back, which nearly sent me round the bend - admittedly it was mainly due to me forgetting to use the motherboard mounting thingies, and screwing it directly into the case. Ahem.

I have to say, I rather like Vista. General opinion on it seems to be very negative, but I've had a very pleasurable experience with it so far - even when running old games like The Longest Journey. All that remains is to reinstall XP on Nadia's computer, which is currently in-progress and proving to be a right pain in the arse. After the swift simplicity of Vista, XP's installation is a right old nightmare. Bah!